Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War - Tapa blanda

"As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature"--John Newman, curator of the Vietnam War Literature Collection at Colorado State University; "one of the great poets and writers of nonfiction produced by the Vietnam War"--The Nation; "thoughtful and probing...a must"--Choice; "possibly the greatest and most valuable of all the [Vietnam War] autobiographies...should be required reading"--H. Bruce Franklin, Rutgers; "full of honest and personal accounts"--Fellowship.

From 1969 to 1974 Ehrhart was just Passing Time. His reentry into the "world" began with his enrollment as a 21-year-old freshman (and token Vietnam vet) at Swarthmore College. At first simply trying to bury his past, Ehrhart slowly if inexorably came to understand what happened to him, and why, in Vietnam. Interspersed are flash-backs to the war itself. It is the story of political--and personal--awakening. As the war dragged on, the United States' deceitful involvement and its perpetuation of fallacies and lies about the war's conduct forced Ehrhart to confront his own feelings about his government, country, and self. Throughout, the reader shares with Ehrhart his odyssey through naivete, growing awareness, angry withdrawal and, finally, a measure of peace.